The Way We Teach Math Is Holding Women Back

First Daughter Ivanka Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos toured the National Air and Space Museum with a group of middle school students Tuesday, encouraging girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics — even while President Donald Trump’s administration put forth a budget proposal that suggests cutting funding for education and research. There is nothing more important than advancing the STEM fields — and those groups who are underrepresented within them.

One area in desperate need of examination is the way we teach mathematics. Many Americans suffer from misconceptions about math. They think people are either born with a “math brain” or not — an idea that has been disproven — and that mathematics is all numbers, procedures and speedy thinking. In reality, mathematicians spend most of their working lives thinking slowly and deeply, investigating complex patterns in multiple dimensions. We sacrifice many people — women and students of color, in particular — at the altar of these myths about math.

Math is a prerequisite for most STEM fields, and the reason many students abandon STEM careers. In higher levels of mathematics, gender imbalances persist: In 2015, about 76% of math doctorates were awarded to men. This figure should prompt alarm in mathematics departments across the country — and encourage focus on an area that is shockingly neglected in discussions of equity: teaching methods in classrooms.

At Stanford University, I teach some of the country’s highest achievers. But when they enter fast-paced lecture halls, even those who were successful in high school mathematics start to think they’re not good enough. One of my undergraduates described the panic she felt when trying to keep pace with a professor: “The material felt like it was flying over my head,” she wrote. “It was like I was watching a lecture at 2x or 3x speed and there was no way to pause or replay it.” She described her fear of failure as “crippling.” This student questioned her intelligence and started to rethink whether she belonged in the field of math at all.